


Operation Sparrow

by sarcasticmama



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 00:49:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1569857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcasticmama/pseuds/sarcasticmama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers through 3x19. Slight AU from the ending scene.<br/>My take on what will happen next. Killian is left in limbo as Emma and the Charming's feel he can no longer be trusted. His spirits crushed, Killian makes to leave Storybrook. Henry learns of his plans and has a better idea. Operation Sparrow is in full effect!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

Emma walked back from the Marina flanked by her parents in a state of shock. Her parents voices were like a buzzing in her ear, she could barely pay them any mind. Her thoughts whirled through memories of the past year, both real and imaginary, and she couldn't stop the images from crashing through her brain. She could feel her control slipping as emotions threatened to pour through and break her, but she clung tightly the the last shred of dignity she had and walked on auto pilot towards the B&B. She turned on the sidewalk leading towards the back entrance and was halfway up the walk before it registered that her mother Mary Margaret was calling her name, and she stopped frozen unable and unwilling to turn and face them.

“Emma, aren't you going to come inside,” Mary Margaret asked, stopping a few steps away, her husband still holding her hand. 

Emma turned her head a fraction to the left and could see into the diner through the windows where her son Henry sat along side of Regina, and across from Robin and his son. Henry was in the middle of a story and his face was so animated, so happy that it hurt to look, and she quickly turned her head, shaking it no in the process. She closed her eyes tight, unwilling to see anymore, unable to take anymore, and muttered aloud. “I’m tired I’m just going to go upstairs to lie down for a while.”

Are you alright, she heard her father ask aloud, but she resisted looking back at them. She could feel the tears starting to form and she needed to escape-now! “I’m fine,” she said, forcing her voice not to quaver. “Magic just takes a lot out of me, that's all.” 

“Well,” Mary Margaret said uncertain, “if you’re sure.”

“I am,” Emma said quickly and before anyone could stop her she strode through the side entrance and bounded up the stairs.

Her parents watched her disappear and exchanged looks with one another. Seeing the look he knew all too well on his wife’s face, David gripped her hand in his and squeezed reassuringly. “She’ll be alright,” he told her confidently. “We've had a long day today. She just needs some time.”

Mary Margaret nodded, and walked with him towards the diner entrance but gave one last glance at the door where her daughter had disappeared before they went inside to eat.

 

Upstairs Emma quickly let herself into the living area of the rooms she and Henry were renting from Granny. On autopilot, she stripped off her jacket and walked down the short hall to her private bedroom, and shut the door behind her. A tear rolled down her face and splashed onto her hand, still on the knob and another quickly joined it. She pushed away from the door, walking blindly towards the chair that stood next to the large window, and tossed her jacket on the bed. She lowered herself into the chair and lifted her feet onto the seat, tucking her knees against her chest as she wrapped her arms around her legs. As she stared out unseeing at the view of the town’s clock tower her vision began to blur, and lowering her head onto her knees she made a soft keening sound as she bitterly wept. 

Henry remembered. He remembered everything. She curled up, buried her face in her arms as she mourned memories that weren't real, and now her son knew it too. She had given him up, and now he would remember the truth, and it quite simply broke her heart. All of her plans of taking Henry back to New York would be met with so much more resistance now; the likeliest culprit being Henry himself. He knew know that he had family here, and they would now be able to reconnect with him. She had wanted for him to have a normal life outside of Storybrook. The life that she had never gotten to have. One with a steady family, and baseball, and kids his own age, not witches, and curses and who knows what else. She never wanted him to feel that he didn't belong. But he had felt that, she thought as she cried, deep painful sobs. He had felt the same way that she had growing up. As though he didn't belong, as though he wasn't loved. Her tears stained her shirt, and her jeans but she didn't even bother to wipe them away, new ones would simply replace them. She had failed, and she knew it. 

 

She felt so alone. Her thoughts turned to Killian, and the tears started afresh. How could he have lied to her? She had trusted him, completely, and he had been lying to her, for god only knew how long. She thought that he had feelings for her, and she could admit now, with the ache burning deep in her heart that she had been starting to return those feelings. The look on his face as Zelena said he had failed her was burned into her brain, and made her stomach ache. Was she destined to never find anyone who truly loved her? Who she could rely on? She knew he had been acting strangely lately, and had just chalked up his strange behavior as a passing phase. She would have thought that there wasn't anything that he could have said to her, that he would have shared everything. Now, she only knew that she couldn't believe in anything. Not in People, not in Happy Endings, and most definitely not in herself. 

She wept for the loss, and she wept for the pain she swore she would never feel again as she replayed Zelena’s words again and again in her head. She cursed herself as she sobbed, wet ugly tears, for letting anyone in. For allowing herself to forget for even a moment what it felt like when someone you loved betrayed you, as they always would. Love was once again obviously not something that was ever to be for her.

 

Across the street from her window a dark figure stood watching her through a telescope. He saw the sobs rack her body as she covered her mouth trying to stem the tide, only to be overcome once more. He lowered the scope, hating himself as he watched the tears trek down her face, unable to stop them. Seeing her cry was as bad as hearing her say she didn't trust him. Both simply broke his heart. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the brick building, the darkness of the alley concealing him from sight as he grieved. He didn’t know where they could go from here. With a simple twist of words Zelena had managed to wreck all that he had been trying so hard to build here, and he didn't know that he could manage to try again. He watched the distant figure of Emma crying, wishing beyond anything that he could go and comfort her. He knew that she was upset that Henry had his memories back. He had seen her face when the boy had taken the book, and knew what it meant to her that he remembered that not all of his memories were real. It was like waking up from a really good dream, he remembered her saying to him. And now that dream was well and truly gone, and so she grieved. 

Meanwhile he grieved for an entirely different dream. One that he had been longing for, and one that he hadn't realized was so fragile. He thought that he had begun to fit in here in Storybrook. That with time he might convince Emma that they could have a relationship, but now he saw that for the impossible lie that it was. She could never see him as more than a pirate, when the truth was he was as far from one right now as could be. No ship, No crew. He was completely rudderless. He watched helplessly as the woman that he loved, would likely always love, had her heart broken all over again. 

He was so engrossed with his own thoughts that he didn't notice the red eyed beast in the tree not 20 yards from where he stood, watching both him and Emma. In her hideout, recovering from the burns Emma had given her hands, Zelena scowled angrily as she watched both Emma and Killian kept from one another. She sniffed and then with a glance down at her burned and scarred hands she wished that she'd made that dratted curse more painful. Emma would pay for the pain she had caused today. It was only a matter of time before the baby was born, and nothing was going to stand in her way. She waved her palm over the image she had been watching through her pets eyes, wincing a little at the pain in her hands. "That's right Savior. Doubt yourself. The weaker your magic is, the easier it will be for me to win."


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry gets educated

Henry was in heaven. He was back and he remembered! Everything in his life finally made sense again, and he joyfully told his mom Regina and her new boyfriend Robin Hood all about New York and what he had been up to the past year. He happily told Robin’s son Roland all about baseball, and video games, and decided after a few minutes of explaining that showing might be better, and he dashed upstairs to get his game boy. As he moved quickly through the hotel room he slowed and then stopped just outside his room as he heard the sound of weeping. He stepped slowly towards his mother’s door and his face fell as he realized his mom was in her room, crying. He raised his hand to knock, but stopped as he considered that he didn't know just what he would say to her. His memories of his mother Emma were mixed in so tightly with his real memories of growing up in Storybrook with Regina, and for a moment his head spun as he tries to separate them, like a confusing dream, but one memory comes back to him with startling clarity, and he backs away from the door. His father. He hadn't forgotten, not really. He knew his father had died, but he hadn't known him in his other memory, and now he could understand just what exactly that meant for him, as real memories of his dad came through. Now he was even more sure that he didn't know how to comfort his mother. He couldn't remember anything in the time that he had known her where he had heard her cry like that, real or fake memories. Confused, sad and feeling more like a lost little boy than he would have liked to admit, he returned to the diner. 

Regina and Robin sat at the table, listening to Roland telling a story, and Henry watched with surprise and a twinge of happiness as his mom held hands with Robin Hood. He stood just out of eyesight and watched everyone in the diner, fully appreciating who they were and what they meant to him. Lost in thought he didn't hear anyone approach from the bathroom behind until Tinkerbell spoke quietly to his right. “Its nice, isn’t it,” she said as she nodded in Regina’s direction. “Its always nice to see True Love win in the end,” she said with a knowing smile. 

Surprised Henry turned to her. “But I thought Daniel was her true love.”

“Love isn't necessarily something that we are meant to find only once. Your mom knew years ago that he was out there. It just took her a while to warm up to the idea,” Tink admitted with a grin, “but it will all work out for the best.”

“Does everyone get a second chance,” Henry asked, his mind straying to his other mother. “I mean, I think she loved my dad; before I mean. But I don’t think she was in love with him anymore. Is she ever going to find happiness?” He glanced up at the ceiling, just for an instant before staring dejectedly back down at the ground. “ I don’t think she even believes in love anymore.” 

Tinkerbell put her arm around Henry’s shoulder and smiled, “Then we’ll just have to believe for her,” and giving him a quick tug on his elbow pulled him into the diner to join his family. 

He slid back into the booth, and Tink, smirking at Regina pulled up a chair next to Roland and engaged him in a discussion about fairy’s in Sherwood Forest. Henry’s foot collided with something and he realized that his story book had slid off the seat and fallen onto the floor. He picked it up and opened it to a random page. He had read through the book countless times, but not once since before he had been abducted and taken to Neverland had he had a moment to read through it again. He realized almost immediately that there were entirely new pages, with new stories illustrated upon them, and he began to read through the tale of how Captain Hook, also known as Killian Jones had come back with the magic bean that would take his family to Neverland to rescue him. 

He flipped ahead and read about David getting shot with a dream-shade arrow, and then how Hook had saved his life. He turned to read the story and was struck dumb as the sight of his mom and Captain Hook kissing. He flipped the page, not reading this time, but just looking through the illustrations and found another, this time with a caption beside it. ‘You’re going to have to choose Swan, because neither of us is going to give up. When I win your heart, and I will win it Emma, it won’t be due to any trickery. It will be because you want me.’ He flipped ahead again and found an illustration of his dad talking to Hook. ‘I made a decision when it comes to Emma; I’m going to back off. For the sake of the boy. I’ll let his parents have a fair shot.’ There were more, most of which he hadn't been there for, and then more images which had taken place after they had returned to Storybrook. He turned to one of the last pages in the book and was so startled he nearly dropped it. He saw his own face. His mother Regina was kissing him on the forehead, invoking True Loves Kiss, breaking the memory curse. This had just happened, so how could it be in the book? He flipped the page, but it was the last in the book, and the last illustration was of his mom and Hook again, only now she was calling him Killian. He hadn’t heard this part and skimmed the page quickly catching up on how David, Snow and Emma thought that he was lying to them. The caption under the picture was Emma telling Hook that she couldn't trust him. And now Henry reflected, his mom was upstairs crying.

Regina had been silently watching Henry, as she half listened to Tink’s story, but when she saw his face fall, she couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “Henry,” she asked, releasing Robins hand and reaching across the table to grab onto one of his, “what’s wrong?”

Henry lay the book flat on the table and slid it across to her, swiveling it so that she could read it. 

Regina glanced at the page and then motioned for David and Snow to join her at the table.   
“What exactly happened after we left,” she asked them both when they got close enough.

David noticed the illustration and pulled the book towards him so he could get a better look. “The book added this,” he asked incredulously?

“He lied to us,” Snow said. “He had to have known that we didn't send that potion and he lied. Who knows what else he has been lying about all this time.” 

Henry grabbed the book back and flipped back through pages, rapidly scanning them until he found the timeline for the missing year. He turned page after page, and Regina placed a hand on his arm to get his attention. “Honey, you won’t find anything in there, the pages from our year are blank-” but then she stopped speaking as she saw an illustration of Robin sneaking into the castle with her. She put her hand on the page to stop him from going farther, and stood up slightly in her seat to get a closer look.

Robin too, recognized the scene and gave her a quick glance. “That is definitely when I first met you,” he told her, confirming her suspicions. 

Regina looked up at Snow and Charming, flabbergasted. “When I looked this through the book this morning the pages were all blank.”

“When you broke the curse this afternoon the book must have filled in all of its blanks,” David supplied.

“Does it say anything about the memory potion,” Snow asked, reaching for a chair so she could sit closer to the book.

Henry began turning pages quickly again, stopping suddenly when he found his father’s tale. He read silently about Neal’s attempt to re-summon the Dark One in the hopes of finding a way back to his son, and his finger traced over the image of Rumple choosing to save Neal over his magic. The table was silent as Henry quietly read through some of his father’s last moments. 

He turned the page to continue the story but found an image of Zelena instead mixing a potion for herself to protect her memory. “Guys,” he said excitedly, “I think this is it.”

Looking over Snow’s shoulder David tried to read ahead, muttering when he saw that Zelena had been the one to make the potion, “I knew Hook was lying.”

“No, wait,” Henry said as he turned the page, and pointed to the text and the accompanying illustration. It was his father, Neal, writing a message and tying the potion to a birds leg. 

“Find Captain Hook,” Tink read aloud when no one else seemed able to. “On the Jolly Roger. Find Killian Jones.” 

They were all silent, as the truth circled round.

Snow turned the page and the illustration was clearly of Killian receiving the message and potion. “Find Emma, the message read,” said Snow quietly. “Family in danger. She is our only hope.” Snow bowed her head, full of shame. “He was telling us the truth,” she said her voice trembling. 

“We couldn’t have known that,” David said. “All we had to go on was what we were hearing-”

“From Zelena,” Snow said shortly. “We believed her over Hook, after everything he did-,” and she bowed her head and could speak no more. 

“But why would Dad send the message to Captain Hook,” Henry asked still baffled by that point. “Why not send it to you Grandpa David?”

“I think that your Dad knew that he couldn’t be the one to go get you and your mom that Hook would have been the one to find a way,” Regina said simply. 

“He loves my mom,” Henry asked aloud looking down at the image of the pirate, “doesn't he.” 

David merely shifted uncomfortably as Snow nodded her head up and down. “Yes,” she said, and Henry lifted his eyes to meet her’s, “I think he does.” 

 

Henry stayed up late into the night reading through the book again. By morning his eyes were burning from lack of sleep, but he was energized. As he neared the end, he was reading slowly, fatigue setting in, and he struggled to get through the last two pages before running downstairs to get some breakfast, when he suddenly realized that instead of two pages left, there were three. 

He quickly flipped ahead to the last page and realized that something new had happened, while he had been reading the book. “Cool,” he murmured, as he turned the page. The last page now detailed more of what he had suspected last night. There were three images on the page, and he quickly read the captions under each. 

The first was of his mother, curled up on the chair he knew to be in her room as tears fell from her face. The Caption read, 'Confidence shaken, trust broken'. 

The next image was of Hook himself, but he appeared to be looking at something through his telescope. His caption read, 'His heart broken, they stand at a turning point'. 

Then the last Image was of Zelena, watching them through a spell, gleefully smiling. 'Love broken cannot heal, Magic shaken cannot defeat', its caption read. 

Henry sat straight up and read the captions again getting more excited.

Quietly leaving a note in the living room where she'd find it, he grabbed a quick donut from Granny, and ran down towards the docks, his plan ready to be sprung into action. He stopped twice and asked for directions, and was told that he would find the Captain working on a small sailboat he had purchased the day before. 

Henry approached the boat unnoticed as Hook was busy tying up some loose rigging. “Running away,” he asked, as he hopped down onto the deck of the boat, slightly startling Hook.

“Its bad form to step onto a man’s boat without asking permission,” Killian said over his shoulder once he saw who it was, and returned to his ropes. 

“So, you’re just planning on taking off, and what, sailing off into the sunset,” Henry asked him, wandering over to see the supplies that had yet to be brought into the hold. 

“I have some business to attend to for a few days,” Killian said quietly. “I left a letter for you about it at Granny’s this morning.” 

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” Henry said, his words a mocking tone of what he had been told only the day before. 

Realizing it, Killian turned to face him. “Going to tell me that you have a better plan then mate,” and he leaned back against the railing, and crossed his arms across his chest, his hook clearly visible.

Henry glanced at it for a moment and then cleared his throat before speaking. “I know that not all of my memories are real, but I know that this last year they were. My mom and I did all those things together.” 

“Aye,” Hook said quietly with a nod not following.

“We used to have fights over movie night before we finally would settle on taking turns. One of us would pick the movie, the other would choose the take out place. After we moved to Boston, moms choices in movies changed. Pirates of the Caribbean, The Princess Bride, Treasure Island; she was always fixated on anything to do with Pirates. Do you know how many times we watched a movie called Hook?” 

Killian swallowed hard but said nothing. 

“See, I know my mom and I didn't remember anything about Storybrook after we left, but I don’t think she forgot you completely either,” Henry said, finishing with a shrug. 

Killian looked away, over the roof of his cabin and cleared his voice before trusting himself to speak. “So am I to infer that you have something in mind…..”

Henry grinned widely,“Operation Sparrow is in full effect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henry has a plan....listen to Henry.

**Author's Note:**

> A multi chaptered fic that I had hoped to finish before Kansas aired, but takes us away from canon. Quite frankly someone needs to sit these two down in a room somewhere and make them talk.
> 
>  
> 
> Enter Henry. ;)


End file.
